I was now standing in the main entryway of the house in a fancy dress (which I really did not want to wear), waiting for the guest to arrive. I really did not want to be here, but I was told that my presence was necessary and that I needed to. So here I was, waiting for someone I did not know and wearing something I did not want to wear. I was even contemplating running back to my room to do some more cultivation practice and checking the state of my bones from the first stage of the technique.
As soon as this thought crossed my mind, a cold chill raced down my spine and through my tail. I was unsure of why that was until the doors opened. Walking through was someone I did not think(hope) I would ever see again, Raina. After she walked through, Mr. Mrs. Xia seemed to puff up with pride and started to walk up to her and attempted to speak but were never able to. When She saw me, she started to make her way over to me while seemingly walking but she was so fast that I could not even dodge.
I know knew why there was a shiver going down my spine. I was now trapped in Raina's hold and suffocating. Trying to get out so I could breathe, I was prevented from doing so as I felt my tail getting grabbed and checked by her. This caused me to jump and push back against her. Somehow, I was able to get out of her hold and quickly made my way away from her. Raina then looked down at her hands with some amount of confusion for a few seconds before looking back up at me and saying, "It seems that the reports were wrong and you have started cultivation. It also seems that it is either a very high rank above what is available in the sect, or you have somehow increased by multiple stages at once".
"Yes, I did start cultivating, and it is a higher-ranked technique," I answered with some hesitation in my voice. I then glanced around the room, looking for some sort of escape route.
"You also seem to have not taken good enough care of your tail, still," she said, causing a large cold shiver to rush down my spine and goosebumps to rise across my entire body. I started stepping back, trying to create some space between us, but before I could run, she moved faster than my eyes could see. She was already behind me, holding my shoulder. Thankfully, she was stopped before I could be kidnapped. Mr. Xia spoke up and caught her attention.
"I believe you have come here to talk about something and not terrorize your daughter," he said after clearing his throat. Raina then looked at him and nodded, encouraging him to lead the way. This caused us to start moving out of the room, and I stood there, stunned for a moment, contemplating what I had just heard.
'Daughter? What does he mean by that? Did I forget something important?' My brain started working at a frantic pace, going everywhere at once. 'Did she not say that she would fix her mistake? Why is Mr. Xia saying that I am Raina's daughter?'
I was jolted out of my thoughts as I felt myself being dragged somewhere. Looking around, I found myself heading for a door down a hallway that I had never been down before. The thing that was dragging me was nothing except the wind around me. I was unable to figure out what was dragging me until I thought that I felt the wind. I was indoors, so where was the wind coming from?
At this point, I remembered what happened in the village and that Raina seemed to be able to control it. This made sense for what was happening right now. I was pulled into the room by the wind sounding me before being dropped onto the couch next to Raina.
"Let me say that I am glad to host the Founder of The Silver Moon Sect at my home." Said Mr. Xia, dropping a bomb on me that I did not expect.
'Sect founder?! The person who is apparently trying to be my mother is the Sect Founder?!' I started to freak out as my brain spiraled down a rabbit hole constantly. In front of me, I could tell that someone was talking, but my brain was still going in hundreds of different directions and not registering what they were talking about. This lasted for a while until I was pulled out by Mr. Xia saying that Silica would be showing Raina to her room.
At this, Silica bowed and started to walk out of the room. Raina followed her out of the room as I was pulled up and dragged out of the room with her. I was dragged all the way to my room, where Silica opened the door and said that the ceiling was damaged and would take a few days to repair. She then left the room, leaving me alone with Raina.
Raina then turned to look at me with a gleam in her eye that sent my instincts going crazy. But like last time, I was caught when she moved faster than I could see, and before I knew it, I was already in the bathroom. The bathtub was immediately filled with hot water, and Raina was already assisting me in taking off my dress. I wanted to keep the dress on, but Raina then gave me a command that sounded like my mother giving me an order, causing me to instinctively follow her orders. I was then thrown in the bathtub without warning.
Popping my head above water, I was then attacked by a crazy fox-eared woman with soap as her weapon. Before I knew it, my hair was soaked through and thoroughly washed, and my tail was now in her hands. She thoroughly massaged, scratched, and washed my tail, which caused me such comfort that I unconsciously relaxed and started purring. I did not even know when she stopped until an abundance of water dropped on top of my head. I was then pulled out of the tub and dried off, then had a nightgown pulled over my head.
From there, I was pulled out of the bathroom and onto the bed, where she started brushing my tail and hair while fluffing them as much as possible. This made me collapse onto the bed and purr as my mind went blank. Eventually, I fell asleep, and the world disappeared from me.
Later, I woke up, and the sky above me had gone dark as the world turned to night. Getting up, I saw that Raina was lying down behind me, asleep. Trying not to wake her up, I used as much of my natural stealth as possible to move into the center of the room. Sitting down in the lotus position, I started checking the condition of my bones all over my body. Strangely enough, I unlocked the ability to see the condition of my body on the inside after I completed the first stage of body-tempering. However I was only able to see the parts of my body that have already enhanced. Thus, I was only able to see my bones, but this still allowed me to see any mistakes that were made during the process that I may have missed.
Checking my bones took about another two to three hours but allowed me to see that missed a single line over my sternum. Drawing in some Qi, which was harder than it was when I was in the shrine, but there was still enough to draw the line over my sternum, finishing the engraving structure. Drawing this small nanometer-long line took me about ten minutes as I tried to match every aspect of the other lines on my bones to perfection. At the moment when the line was completed, all the engraving across my skeletal structure lit up, and Qi started rushing into my body as I felt the world seemed to grow more vibrant, and my mind felt like it was able to absorb even more information at the same time. As I was looking around, I felt like my eyes could see even more than I could before.
This overwhelmed my mind, and I lost consciousness at this point due to information overload from my new abilities. What I only learned in the morning was that I apparently screamed from pain when I engraved the last line on my sternum. This woke up Raina, and she found out I was cultivating and even managed to see my skeletal structure flash through my body. When I fell unconscious, she had caught me and pulled me back to bed, where I woke up in the morning.
Everyone seemed to gloss over the fact that she held me there for a few minutes after I woke up, attacking me with that acursesed brush.